Ubuntu upgrade from 12.04 to 12.10 crashed and now /home partition won't mount at bootup

Question

I tried to upgrade my wife's Packard Bell netbook running Lubuntu 12.04 LTS to 12.10. It all ran smoothly until after the downloading of packages and requesting I confirm that some will be removed, added etc.

When I returned after leaving it to do it's thing, I had a black screen with a lot of text which unfortunately I did not note down although it was very cryptic. I do remember that it was mentioning something about the kernel, although if this is the problem I don't know.

I had to hard reboot and tried the recovery mode. I managed to get to a root shell and noticed that it is not a problem of disk space. Before the upgrade there was over 3GB on /, and now there is about 2GB. What is strange though is that the /home does not get mounted automatically at bootup. I tried various schemes as reported below to get it mounted automatically without any success.

I then tried various options such as:

fsck dpkg network root grub system-summary = reports no /home directory

Each time it asks me to mount all the filesystem in fstab and when I confirm it stops at

mountall: mount /home/mywife/etc/etc/ terminated with status 1

it says such as in place of etc/etc/ Documents Music Media Pictures and so on. I tried to find the solution suggested in various forums including this one but with no exact situation like mine.

Help will be much appreciated.

The /etc/fstab below:

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid -o value -s UUID' to print the universally unique identifier
# for a device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name
# devices that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>
proc            /proc           proc    nodev,noexec,nosuid 0       0
/dev/sda1       /               ext4    errors=remount-ro 0       1
# /home was on /dev/sda5 during installation
UUID=b2c60910-ff66-4713-a629-37c293b62393 /home           ext4    defaults        0       2
#/dev/sda2       none            swap    sw              0       0
/dev/mapper/cryptswap1 none swap sw 0 0
192.168.2.2:/home/ericam/Documents /home/ericam/media/Documents nfs timeo=14,intr,rsize=8192,wsize=8192 0 0
192.168.2.2:/home/ericam/Pictures /home/ericam/media/Pictures nfs timeo=14,intr,rsize=8192,wsize=8192 0 0
192.168.2.2:/home/ericam/Music /home/ericam/media/Music nfs timeo=14,intr,rsize=8192,wsize=8192 0 0

This does seem a bit strange.This is the 1st time I see the /cryptswap and mounting to the ../media/.. directory! There doesn't seem to be any older or backup fstab which would show up the differences.

running "df" as root brings up the following:

df: `/run/user': no such file or directory
Filesystem       1K-blocks ........ Use%    Mounted on
/dev/sda1        ..................  79%    /
udev             ..................   0%    /dev
none             ..................   1%    /run/lock
none             ..................   1%    /run/shm

I had to type it out so bear with the ..... bit.

Here is the output for the lsblk command:

NAME   MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda      8:0    0 232.9G  0 disk 
├─sda1   8:1    0   9.3G  0 part /
├─sda2   8:2    0   2.8G  0 part 
├─sda3   8:3    0     1K  0 part 
└─sda5   8:5    0 220.8G  0 part 
sdb      8:16   1   1.9G  0 disk 
└─sdb1   8:17   1   1.9G  0 part /mnt

Note that sdb is the usb stick I used to copy over the data. I might add that I used the mount command.

After a few days I tried the following:

The fstab was changed to this:

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid -o value -s UUID' to print the universally unique identifier
# for a device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name
# devices that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>
proc            /proc           proc    nodev,noexec,nosuid 0       0
#/dev/sda1       /               ext4    errors=remount-ro 0       1
UUID=d7ae9306-1dac-416e-8d59-1055ada63c48   /   ext4    errors=remount-ro 0       1
# /home was on /dev/sda5 during installation
#/dev/sda5  /home           ext4    defaults        0       2
UUID=b2c60910-ff66-4713-a629-37c293b62393 /home           ext4    defaults        0       2
/dev/sda2       none            swap    sw              0       2
#/dev/mapper/cryptswap1 none swap sw 0 0
#192.168.2.2:/home/ericam/Documents /home/ericam/media/Documents nfs timeo=14,intr,rsize=8192,wsize=8192 0 0
#192.168.2.2:/home/ericam/Pictures /home/ericam/media/Pictures nfs timeo=14,intr,rsize=8192,wsize=8192 0 0
#192.168.2.2:/home/ericam/Music /home/ericam/media/Music nfs timeo=14,intr,rsize=8192,wsize=8192 0 0

I have amended the fstab after this questions advice: my /home is not mounted after 12.04 upgrade I changed the lines to include the UUID which are correct. I checked... The command 'fdisk -l' shows:

Disk /dev/sda: 250.1 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders, total 488397168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x3e751ccc

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *        2048    19531775     9764864   83  Linux
/dev/sda2       482537472   488396799     2929664   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda3        19533822   482535423   231500801    5  Extended
/dev/sda5        19533824   482535423   231500800   83  Linux

Partition table entries are not in disk order

Disk /dev/sdb: 2002 MB, 2002780160 bytes
62 heads, 62 sectors/track, 1017 cylinders, total 3911680 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0001dbd4

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1   *          62     3909347     1954643    c  W95 FAT32 (LBA)

It still won't mount at bootup.....

How about output from df in the root prompt, to check what has been mounted? — Nattgew, Mar 28 '14 at 21:11
Do you think it is a problem with the fstab being corrupted? You would think that during an upgrade the previous fstab would be saved as a .old or something. — Jacques MALAPRADE, Mar 28 '14 at 21:49
I don't think fstab got corrupted, you can check if there was a backup file created. Changes to configuration sometimes cause things to not mount correctly. — Nattgew, Mar 28 '14 at 21:58
You can try to replace the UUID with /dev/sda5 to see it will mount your home directory. — Nattgew, Mar 28 '14 at 22:00
I commented out everything except the /dev/sda1 line (/) in fstab, uncommented the /dev/sda2 line (swap), and added a line for /dev/sda5 as suggested above.
/dev/sda5 /home ext4 defaults 0 2 It still doesn't mount the /home directory. Any suggestions? — Jacques MALAPRADE, Mar 29 '14 at 08:48
I added the lsblk output file to above text. Had to copy it onto usb stick and transfer it to another PC. — Jacques MALAPRADE, Mar 30 '14 at 08:29
What does it say if you try to mount the /home manually? — Nattgew, Mar 30 '14 at 16:20
OK. It mounts it, but how will I get it to mount it at boot time? — Jacques MALAPRADE, Mar 30 '14 at 19:24
Does anyone have an answer or should I start another question about mounting /dev/sda5 at boot time? I guess it would be better to keep to this question as others may have similar problem stemming from the upgrade. — Jacques MALAPRADE, Apr 02 '14 at 12:57
A more specific question about getting the disks mounted may help. — Nattgew, Apr 02 '14 at 14:50
I amended the question to include the problem mounting the /home partition. — Jacques MALAPRADE, Apr 02 '14 at 17:34

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 28 '14 at 22:09

1

If you can get your /home to mount correctly, you should try to do a normal boot and finish the upgrade. If your sources.list has quantal, then do a regular update, otherwise run the upgrade again:

update-manager -d

Or, if you are unable to get to a graphical session, try from the command line:

sudo apt-get install update-manager-core
sudo do-release-upgrade -d

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Upgrades

answered Mar 28 '14 at 22:09

Nattgew

2,100

I commented out everything except the /dev/sda1 line (/) in fstab, uncommented the /dev/sda2 line (swap), and added a line for /dev/sda5 as suggested above. /dev/sda5 /home ext4 defaults 0 2 It still doesn't mount the /home directory. Any suggestions? – – Jacques MALAPRADE Mar 29 '14 at 08:55
I have managed to mount the /home directory. Quantal appears in the sources.list file. I would like to update but it says that not all the files have been downloaded. I tried to use the "with networking" option in the recovery menu but it needs to run fstab and then hangs. How to run sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get upgrade with no internet connection? – Jacques MALAPRADE Mar 30 '14 at 20:13
Tried sudo apt-get install update-manager-core and it comes up with: W: Not using locking for read only lock file /var/lib/dpkg/lock E: dpkg was interupted, you must manually run 'dpkg --configure -a' to correct the problem. When I run it it says dpkg: error: unable to access dpkg status area: Read-only file system. Even with sudo I get the same. – Jacques MALAPRADE Mar 30 '14 at 20:20
Can you find an error from when it boots and fails to mount /home/? – Nattgew Apr 02 '14 at 14:49
A quick update on the errors at bootup: (1) Normal boot: Displays lubuntu splash and hangs. (2) FailsafeX graphics mode: Asks to continue mounting using /etc/fstab. As yes is only option, continues and hangs at fsck from util-linux 2.20.1 and /dev/sda1: clean, .... files .... blocks and /dev/sda5: clean, ..... (3) Root terminal: At prompt I mount /dev/sda5 /home which works, then fdisk -l shows all the partitions no problem but df -h there is no /dev/sda5orhome, butdf: /run/user: No such file or directory... /run/rpc_pipefs:..(4)Grub loader:fsck.../dev/sda`... – Jacques MALAPRADE Apr 02 '14 at 20:03
I have mounted the /home. See answer above. I still have problems with completing the upgrade. I am following your last step at the moment: sudo do-release-upgrade -d and will hopefully report back with positive news. – Jacques MALAPRADE Apr 07 '14 at 11:57

score 0 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:24

0

I have a way to get the /home directory to mount with instruction on this page: 13.10 won't start after upgrading I will recap for brevity what worked for me:

Dropping to root shell in the options of the Recovery mode at bootup.
Run
```
mount -o remount,rw /
```
Then
```
mount --all
```
Then
```
dpkg --configure -a
```
Then
```
reboot
```
After the reboot ran
```
apt-get -f install
```
Following this I ran the last step as described above:
```
update-manager -d
```

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:24

Community

1

answered Apr 07 '14 at 11:52

Jacques MALAPRADE

945
4
17
35

Since it says 12.10 it seems like the upgrade worked at least partially. Did you try doing a normal update? – Nattgew Apr 07 '14 at 15:10
Thanks for your help Nattgew. I persisted and found the solution. I am struggling with the bluetooth now but that's another question. – Jacques MALAPRADE Apr 07 '14 at 15:12

Ubuntu upgrade from 12.04 to 12.10 crashed and now /home partition won't mount at bootup

2 Answers2